Swimming pool typology: a modern refurbishment brings one of 183 UFO-like swimming pools back to life

After performing badly in the 1968 Olympics, France initiated a programme of building ‘1000 pools’. Throughout the following decade, between 600 and 700 pools were constructed, including 183 ‘Piscines Tournesols’, a type developed by Bernhard Schoeller. These domed buildings constructed from prefabricated panels have a section that swings open to expose swimmers to the sun, so creating a hybrid indoor-outdoor pool that can be modulated according to the season or weather. Today, many of the Tournesols are in poor condition, so the successful refurbishment of an example in Lingolsheim provides a potential model for future projects. The architects have retained the dome, but added a boomerang-shaped extension to house changing rooms,offices and services.

Adolfo Natalini was a founder member of Superstudio, one of the dynamic coteries of architects formed to shake professional complacency in the heady late ’60s. Peter Cook, leading member of another such group, the London-based Archigram, described the excitement of the period and discusses Natalini’s work, past and present.

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